San Diego City Beat reports on a lawsuit filed by the family of a man who died in police custody:
On May 29, 2007, Ramel Henderson, then 51, lost consciousness while San Diego Police officers attempted to put him in what’s known as “maximum restraint,” where a subject is handcuffed and placed on his stomach while officers bind the person’s ankles and then attach the ankle cuff to a waist cord. Henderson never regained consciousness and died several hours later at Paradise Valley Hospital in National City.
At issue is the amount of time Henderson was left lying on his stomach while handcuffed. For the past two decades, law-enforcement, civil-rights and medical experts have debated, and never quite agreed, whether prone restraint compromises a person’s ability to breathe to the point of being lethal (one training expert advises that anytime a person is handcuffed face-down, an officer on scene should hold his or her breath as a way to determine when the subject should be rolled onto his side so he can get a good breath).
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